Super girls don't cry
by RowenaR
Summary: Before Boreas and Orion there was Tony, as everyone reading "Haven't thought of you lately" might have noticed. But what exactly happened, five years before HTOYL, when Tony suddenly wasn't there anymore? Kinda death fic. No stand-alone, sorry.


**Author: **Me, but with rareb (co-author of "Haven't thought of you lately") as beta.**  
Summary: **Before Boreas and Orion there was Tony, as everyone reading "Haven't thought of you lately" might have noticed. But what exactly happened, five years before HTOYL, when Tony suddenly wasn't there anymore? Kinda death fic.**  
Category:** drama, angst**  
Rating:** K+**  
Disclaimer: **The Potter-verse belongs to JKR (who recently claimed to be THE ONLY ONE WHO UNDERSTANDS IT OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!), Tony and Jake technically belong to people from the RPG mentioned at the beginning of HTOYL, but I guess I took a few liberties with them. People may please forgive me for that.**  
A/N:** This one popped into my mind after listening to "Carry you home" by James Blunt one time too often and watching the video. The reason that this features another song is that "Carry you home" is kind of reserved for another story, but the one below suits the story just fine, I think.

And now on with the story and don't forget:

Feedback will earn you a cookie, flames will roast my marsh-mellows.

* * *

**Super girls don't cry**

_"And then she'd say it's OK I got lost on the way  
But I'm a Super girl and Super girls don't cry  
And then she'd say its all right I got home late last night  
But I'm a Super girl and Super girls just fly."_

_Reamonn, "Supergirl"_

It wasn't supposed to go like this. Really wasn't supposed to go like this. He wasn't supposed to take on the buggers alone, just to buy us some time so we could get away. Not Tony, who told us all that this was really his last skirmish before finally settling down with Lavinia, maybe returning to his parents' farm… and now I'm standing in front of their block to bring her the news of his death.

Trust me, I didn't exactly jump up and down with excitement but at least I didn't let it come to drawing straws because in the end I did volunteer. After all, Tony _was_ my best mate, ever since School and Lavinia has the right to get told about it all by the comrade who knows… knew Tony best. I still wish, though, I had one of the girls with me. I have no idea how Lavinia will react and I was never good with people getting emotional. And on top of that… I fear _I_ might get emotional, and how would that look? I'm supposed to be strong one after all.

Anyway… I really need to get in there now. I know that she's waiting and that she's worried. Lavinia always tried not to let on _how_ worried she was about him, but you could still see it. _Yes_, even _I_ could see it once or twice. I may be an old ox when it comes to reading people, but sometimes even I have epiphanies. Sometimes she would smile while seeing him off, but the smile wouldn't quite reach her eyes. Or she would hug him a little longer than usual when we came back after a particularly nasty mission. Just things like that.

I take a deep breath – about the hundredth in the last half hour – and finally press the bell button. It's answered immediately. That doesn't bode well. She must have been waiting right in front of it, probably pretty anxious. Bloody bugger.

I open the door and enter the house. Inside it's pretty dark and for some reason I don't turn on the light. Now the stairs. But it's harder than I thought. Each step seems to be harder to take than the one before and while climbing them up I feel like a sodding old man. Then, finally, I've reached her door. It's already open and the Auror in me wants to scold her for that. After all, I could have been a Death Eater masquerading as Jake Flemming. Tony and I tried to drill asking the password before opening the bloody door time after time into her but she just wouldn't listen and every time we came back the door flew open the moment she heard us reaching the last step and she would come flouncing out of the door and hugging first him and then me.

But today… today she just stands there, as if she already knew Tony wouldn't be there to hug today. "Hey.", she says and already her voice is breaking up.

"Hey.", I answer and feel incredibly stupid. All the words I'd carefully laid out in my head have mysteriously left me and so I'm just standing there, feeling like an idiot.

After another strange moment of heavy silence she blinks and says: "Merlin, I'm… sorry. I totally forgot my manners. You want to come in?"

Wha…? I feel a little thrown off-guard by her totally out of place answer at first, but I manage to get my bearings and nod. When I'm inside, she busies herself with shuffling shoes to make room for mine and touching and needlessly repositioning things on a little sideboard. I catch a look at her hands. They are shaking, an odd contrast to the absolutely controlled rest of her body.

"Lavinia, I…" She turns around, and her shaking hands manage to push a little glass figure off the sideboard. With a clink it bursts on the tiled floor.

"Hey, it's been a long day for you, right? Come in, I'll make some tea. Just sit down on the couch." Her voice sounds tight and nervous and kind of rattling, but I still want to comply with her at first, because my mum always told me to be polite to your hostess. Then I remember why I'm here and I realise I can't keep up this act any longer.

"He… didn't make it, Lavinia." For a moment she's pausing, actually freezing in her steps. After a few seconds she turns around again, suddenly not nervous anymore, but calm and controlled and kind of resigned.

"I... know. The moment… the moment I heard you ring I somehow knew." She looks past me and a kind of subtle jolt seems to go through her body. She's pulled herself together, obviously. "Come in, I'll… I'll get the tea ready." Merlin… please make that she won't keep that up much longer, because I just realised people _not_ getting emotional are even harder to take than people who burst out in tears. Hell, I'd even take fury and accusations and reproaches over this quiet acceptance.

But she already made her way to the kitchen, leaving me to either stand in the hall or sit down in the living room in front of the flickering fireplace. I decide to do the latter and when I look into the flames I suddenly wish I'd just given her a call via the floo network. But she deserved to be told in person, I tell myself.

After a short while she comes back with a tray in her hands, a tea kettle and three cups on it. Just like she used to every time I accompanied Tony home after a mission, only that now there are only two people here. My first impulse is to tell her that we only need two cups, but decide against it. Something in her whole bearing tells me she isn't quite as stable as she tries to show me.

She sits down, still without saying something and so I feel obliged to start the conversation again. Everything just to get another reaction than the one from before from her. "Lavinia… he… he died as a hero." With a clank her tea cup hits the saucer and I'm already prepared for an onslaught of accusations. Lots of people we had to bring the death news to did that; accusing us of not being careful enough, of abandoning their loved ones or just letting them run into their certain death.

But the only thing that comes is: "Of course. He was _Tony_. He wouldn't die as a coward." How the hell do you answer to something like that? Of course he wouldn't. No Gryffindor ever would, because we're raised to be the strong, courageous and noble ones. We aren't Slytherins.

"No… no, he wouldn't. He… he saved our lives, you know. Without him sacrificing himself for us… none of us would be alive now." And the guilt has already started to eat away at me. So, please, Lavinia, tell me we shouldn't have let him made this sacrifice. That his death was our fault. I _want_ to hear that, I _need_ to hear that.

"That's… so like him. I'm… I'm proud of him." Lavinia… who are you trying to fool? I've known you since our First Year. I've seen you and Tony make your first steps toward each other, become friends, overcome a period of awkwardness and finally falling in love with each other. I've been his Best Man at your wedding. I've seen both of you sharing wedded bliss and being tenderly in love even after five years. You really want to try and tell me there is nothing inside of you apart from quiet acceptance and patriotic pride?

"You… have every right to be. He managed to drag two Death Eaters down with him. One of… well, one of them was Charles Avery. It was an ambush, but when they…"

"Stop, please. It's okay. You don't need to tell me now, we'll… have time for that later." For the first time I finally see some cracks in her façade, strangely enough at my mentioning of Avery, a Slytherin goon from two years under ours in School. He was a deranged psychopath, and we'd been hunting him for over a year. Then someone at the Ministry got an anonymous tip where Avery's secret apartment was located.

We went there to set up a trap and finally catch him, but it turned out that he'd actually been waiting there for us with a rather large group of Death Eaters. We managed to take out most of them, but we were trapped in the narrow street and from a certain point on we just knew that someone of us had to stay back and cover our retreat if we wanted to survive. It all happened in a few minutes, and Tony almost immediately made clear that he would be the one staying back. He was supposed to escape after taking out Avery but he just never made it.

I have no idea why, because when it had happened I'd been around a corner and could only hear the screams… and after that, silence. A terrible, all-consuming silence. When we'd returned to the battlefield we'd only found the bodies of Tony and the two last remaining Death Eaters.

I wish I could tell her that. I wish I could talk to her about that, but she seemed so resolute, so adamant about not wanting to hear it that I'll stay quiet about that for now. So instead I say: "That's… okay, of course. Listen, Lavinia, we set up a found and if you need any financial assistance or anything…" This time the clank of her tea cup is much more resounding than the first time.

"I can very well manage all the costs on my own, thank you. I suppose you will tell me when you release the body?" Dammit, _Lavinia_. How can you still be so controlled? What's going on in that head of yours? You of all people – impulsive, emotional, compassionate Lavinia… I don't get it.

"Of… course. But if you… if you need any help we'll gladly support you. We can carry out all the formal stuff and everything…" The tea cup and the saucer are put on the small table in front of us so hard that the tea cup tilts over and falls on the living room's carpet.

"No. Tony is… was _my_ husband. _I_ will carry out all of this. Nobody apart from me has the right to do that. He married _me_, wanted to settle down with _me_… wanted… to have… a family… with… _me_…" The shaking of her hands has slowly started to consume the rest of her body and her breath starts to become laboured. "How… how could he do that? He had a _wife_ for heaven's sake. He wasn't supposed to play the hero. How could he just leave me behind like that? How could he…" Before I know it I have already reacted and put my arms around her, holding her tightly. All of her precious control has now left her and she's sobbing into my t-shirt but I don't mind. At least finally there's a reaction.

She continues cursing Tony, rages on at how he could just go and be a stupid hero, and quite frankly: That's about the same thing _I_ thought when I stood in the street, with the rain pouring down and the body of my best friend lying at my feet, leaving me to tell his wife about how he'd thrown himself right into battle without thinking of the consequences.

Fuck it, Tony, she loved you. I lost a friend, but she lost a _future_. She lost a husband and a home and a possibility for having a family of her own. How could you do that to her? How could you just go and leave her behind, with her marriage and her future in ruins before her?

The answer… the answer is pretty easy, actually. You couldn't help doing it. It was carved deep into you. Among us you'd – for some strange reason – always been the most fervent Death Eater hunter, bent on getting them all behind bars and away from everyone they could be a danger to. You had a deep-rooted hatred inside you, dating back from all the times they would call you a mudblood at School or would tell you what they would do to you and your family and everyone you loved once they'd gained power again. At School it always just simmered, because you were much too gentle and good for it ever to break out. But then they nearly killed your parents and everything had changed. Did you ever let Lavinia see this side of you, the hunter, the fighter? Or was that a sight you always reserved for us, your comrades-in-arms?

Lavinia's sobbing is slowly subsiding, and after a little more heaving she detangles herself from my arms, wiping her eyes with her sleeves and taking a few deep breaths to calm herself down again. "Sorry, that was… uncalled for. I… I never meant to be like this. I know he only did his duty, and I… it won't happen again." Wha… She didn't just tell me that she thinks her justified anger was "uncalled for"?

"Lavinia…"

"No, really. I won't let myself go like that again. It was uncalled for and unjustified and just not true. I won't ever accuse him of anything like that again. I'm… sorry." I know that look in her eyes. Every time she has resigned herself to something she's wearing it. Back shortly after graduation, when everyone was telling her marrying Tony so soon was nuts she was the one defending their decision to everyone very forcible and in the end she'd gotten what she'd wanted. When she's wearing that look, not even You-Know-Who could make her reconsider.

"It's… okay. But… look… if you want us to be there for you…"

"I'll ask you, I know. I will, honestly. Thank you for… being here. And thank you for… coming here in person. Jake?" I look up again, curious at what will come now.

"What?"

She takes a deep breath, but when she speaks up again, her voice is so low that I have difficulties to understand her over the crackling fire. "Thank you for being with Tony in his last moments. It means a lot to me knowing that he didn't die alone. I hope… I hope he didn't have to suffer much." Wham. Just another hit in the gut. He _did_ die alone, and that was my fault, as well. I shouldn't have listened to him when he'd told us to run. Maybe it wouldn't have made any difference, but at least the two last people he ever saw wouldn't have been two _Death Eaters_ of all people. I gulp. Usually I'm all about honesty, but what would it get us now, anyway? It wouldn't make any of us happy, and we had enough to trouble us already.

"No, he didn't. It was… quick. His last thoughts were on you. I'm… so sorry. He'll always be remembered as the hero he was, Lavinia." She only nods and gets up to put the now empty tea cups back on the tray. Just when she reaches the kitchen door, she turns around, looking strangely wistful.

"Yes, I know. And I'm kind of thankful for that. But being a hero will still not bring him back to me." No, it won't. But I hope that in time you'll find happiness again. You deserve it, Lavinia, no matter what you think. I promise you, you will.


End file.
